


Legend

by lizzledpink



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzledpink/pseuds/lizzledpink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You die, one day. The world doesn't follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legend

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly influenced by Firefly. Originally written 7/25/2011.

You are old, and the world no longer cares about you. 

Their world is all about the war between Zonko's and Weasley's, not the Dark and the Light. They celebrate the success of obtaining Veela rights, not the end of a terrorizing Dark Lord. They cry for the outcome of games with the Chudley Cannons, rather than weeping for friends lost. It's a happier world, and you have no place in it.

You leave the world in the hands of the future. You take your lovely wife's hand, and run the other hand through her long, silvery hair, smiling. You floo to a new home, a beautiful cliffside cottage protected by the Fidelius, with your daughter as Secret Keeper.

It is there, finally, that you find peace.

:::

You die, one day. The world doesn't follow.

Some vilify you. Others place you on the same pedestal as Albus Dumbledore. Your son rakes in the royalties but is ultimately your son, the head of the Potter family, and a good man. You raised him to be that. You are proud.

Your name is legend. Some people don't think you have died. Some speculate, and come close to the truth - you are the Master of Death, yes. And always will be.

But it was your time, and you met your time with a smile - the words "greeting death like an old friend" rang in your mind.

Long ago you had given up the naive view that you might ever fade completely. You know they will tell stories. You know you will become a legend. So, perhaps, in that small way, you might live forever - forever remembered. 

All you know is you miss your wife, and all the others lost in your long life. It will be good to see them again.

The young ones who now run the world throw parties in your name, or cry at your funeral. You asked not to be publicly recognised with a statue. Instead, they commission a painting.

Your visage, fresh from your thirties, back when you were a strong leader for the Aurors, is hung on a wall outside the Great Hall in Hogwarts. Your painting-self likes to smile at the children, especially the Gryffindors, and remains on curiously good terms with Peeves.

"Harry James Potter," reads the painting's caption. And, in smaller text, "Hogwarts was his home."

Nobody would ever know who added the second inscription, a few months after the painting's initial hanging, but nobody was about to take it down. There was nobody left at Hogwarts who personally knew Harry Potter, but it was one of those things that was obviously true to anybody who cared to read it.

There is nowhere else your painting belongs.

:::

When the last one to shake your hand has died, you are not quite a story. The adults tell their children the bedtime tale of the Man Who Lived, and they wonder if it's true, sometimes, but believe their parents. Their children do not. 

In History of Magic, they teach about you. They use a textbook on your subject written after your death; some of it is accurate, and some is not. At least the author referenced the book that was actually written by one of your friends, even if they did dismiss some of it as impossible.

Learning what Hide-and-Seek is from the muggleborn population (not that such a term is used half so much these days) the wizarding children adapt a new game. There is an eerie reminisence of Harry Hunting in the way the "Death Eaters" run around looking for "Harry Potter," but the nice difference is that when Harry gets found, he still wins the game - he's the hero, of course.

The game lasts for centuries.

The Potter family believes still in the man you once were.

:::

You are still taught in History of Magic, the same way as ever, but it's different now. The teaching is less focused on your life, and more focused on the war. Nobody is left to care about the war. The battles are dispassionate, and tell not of the way a twin brother fell with a smile frozen on his face, but of the way the battle was fought between trained users of the Dark Arts and ragtag groups of sudents, aurors, and parents combined - and somehow, the light prevailed.

They tell the children that you were incredibly powerful, and made Voldemort mortal all on your own. They tell of your clever deception and your bravery at facing him head on. 

They don't speak of the way Diagon Alley died, turned to dust in its abandoned state. They don't cover the fact that you were abused as a child. They speak of you as a hero, not quite a god, and not a man as they did before.

The Potter family is a family like any other. But, they slowly become proud and carry your name on them like a cloak of power. Some of them bask in the fame of being descended from the Boy Who Lived. Others remember your name and swear not to use it, but to honour it, and you would call them true Potters, not that you are ever asked. You're dead.

But where the main Potter line wears that cloak of false, borrowed respect, the littlest daughter keeps her own cloak, a Cloak of Invisibility, given to her by her wonderful Grandfather Hugo. Ignored by her family, which only cares that she never does the family name wrong, she happily marries a muggle. She gives her son the cloak when he turns fifteen, and he to his daughter, and so the line of Peverell continues in quiet obscurity.

:::

The head librarian at Hogwarts, Colin Creevey (the third, if you want specifics), becomes fascinated with you upon discovering your name. Everybody knows Harry Potter was the boy who lived, and everybody knows what he did for the wizarding world. His actions directly saved Wizardkind from extinction.

Creevey is the first in years to research you not as a legend, but as a man. He flips through pages, fascinated wildly by the way your story varies. Some say you slayed a basilisk with a mere sword when you were a second-year, while others claim that you tamed a dragon with words alone in a tournament in your fourth, and succeeded in seducing a veela that same year.

He hits upon the book of Luna Scamander. The writing is a bit dogdy, but when his brain makes the connection between her name and that of the Lovegood girl, given Order of Merlin Third Class for her war efforts, his eyes widen. Between her strange words lies perhaps one of the best, most truthful accounts about you yet.

A book is written, and published. The Wizarding World sends itself into a brief tizzy of Harry Potter mania. Colin Creevey still looks up your name from time to time, but his obsession with your life becomes background noise, particularly when he meets the love of his life and is distracted by other things.

The photo on the back cover was taken by his ancestor, the original Colin Creevey, who died in the battle.

He was, of course, your friend. And of that, Colin Creevey the Third could not be prouder.

:::

Magical Society manages to remain hidden for a very long time. It is only when the planet itself is at stake that it finally reveals itself.

The solar flares are harsh, and soon neither magic nor technology will be able to keep the heat away. Earth is going to die. 

The muggles build space-bound ships as a last-ditch effort to escape. There are two planets that current technology will reach and disperse people to. Those planets are not fully habitable, only partially - which is where wizards come in. Their spells and wards can, for a time, at least, hold off the worst effects until more stable, technical methods of terraforming can be invented.

Humanity escapes by the seat of its trousers into space. Earth is burnt to a crisp.

Most of Hogwarts crumbles to the ground, ending at last its years of faithful service to the young magic-users who walked through its time-honoured halls. Some stones remain. The wards leave intact what they can, but what they can is very little. The Chamber of Secrets is uncovered, and mostly intact - not that anybody is around any longer to see it, or to wonder at the size of the fully-preserved dead Basilisk that remains there.

The goblins of Gringotts, by contract with their magic, are bound to the Earth. They hide underground in their city, and remain deep in their vaults. They struggle, for a time, to find a new path - banking has been the way of the Goblins for years, as has warfare, but all enemies and clients have left the planet entirely.

Eventually, they close off the vaults, leaving it all intact and sealed away. They build out their city. The day will come when the goblins will almost forget that Gringotts was ever a bank - almost. Goblins do have extraordinary memory.

In a closed-off vault in a partially collapsed cave, there will lie a vault smaller only than that of Lord Salazar Slytherin himself. Inside can be found wonderful treasures - a sword, set beside a hat; a cracked ring and a wand. On the walls, the portraits sleep, weary and inactive.

The portrait of Harry James Potter would never again open its eyes and move, nor would it ever see the portrait of Lily Jane Brennings, the last Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, set across from him.

He wouldn't ever meet her, or know that she was his great-great-many-greats-granddaughter, beloved by all. And neither would she.

:::

On the planets, humanity thrives once more, magic and muggle together rebuilding, remaking, and reinventing what has been lost.

What books they could keep, could take with them, are revered and hailed. Veracity is not a concern. Books from the old planet are rare and precious treasures no matter what. These words were written on their beautiful planet, and nothing can ever live up to their greatness.

One of these books is written by Colin Creevey the Third.

Your legacy no longer matters. What is important is the story. Groups of men, women, and children that might be called "families" gather to learn and listen. It doesn't matter any longer if you did or did not exist. To them, you are both purely a tale and completely real. You are one of their last tethers to a life that used to be. 

They remember their dead planet, and mourn it. And through your life, they can celebrate it again. The wizards laugh, and wonder what Quidditch was, and if it was anything like the Quodpot game they've been playing for as long as anybody can remember. The muggles use your story as a beautiful introduction to a world they had never known.

When the non-magical world first learned of magic, there was no time to appreciate it. They needed it. They didn't care about wizarding culture or families or morals. All that mattered was that humanity would be able to live. Now that survival was less of an imminent concern, they could relax, and learn about their invisible cousins.

They slept with dreams of dragons and broomsticks and children fighting a grand war and powerful boys fighting against all odds against the darkness.

And when they woke up, they worked to gather food and build more shelters, same as every day. A tough life, but a necessary one for the future, and one with a worthy goal.

You are like a hero, but not the same as before. You become a goal, and an idol. You inspire brave people to continue their work and save lives and labour slowly towards a bright, interplanetary future.

You are a saviour once more.

:::

Settlements become cities, and cities countries, and more planets fall under human control. Mankind wonders if alien life exists, but hasn't seen it yet, and is content to live on its own.

The book about you has been copied over and over, made wildly popular, but that was in the past. Every library contains a digital copy of Colin Creevey's words, if not one of the rare printed ones. However, the story is again ignored, for the most part. You become a part of old Earth history - treasured, but only by scholars who have the time and money to study the book thoroughly. Few do.

In losing the printed copies, the world loses the pictures, the moving ones, on the cover. For some reason, the pictures just can't be translated into video data. It's a shame, but the description of Harry's looks is probably vivid enough for it not to matter.

Nobody bothers to look up the book. Everybody knows the legend anyway. Every child is born and raised to know your incredible tale. They like your story. But nobody questions it. You are a fairy tale. You are like Merlin was in your time - but nobody knows Merlin's name, not any longer. 

You are history. You are a myth, and a fairy tale, and a story told to children by their great-grandparents, who want them to know what Earth was like. They barely remember it themselves, but even "barely," they feel, is important. Humans should always remember the wonderful world from which they were born, even if it's gone.

Some children care. Some don't. Of those that care, some grow up and lose faith in stories.

And a few hold you in their hearts forever, same as their parents and grandparents, and their parents before them.

A few is all it takes.

:::

One day, the last user of magic in the world dies, leaving only her squib children alive - to use a far, far outdated term.

That is the day that your name becomes, once and for all, just a story.

But they still tell about you for years to come.

:::

When humanity discovers the secret to time travel, there are disasters and paradoxes, and a few people who come back in time. But these are muggles who don't understand or know of magic, and they bring only their time-travel and their futuristic clothes and appearance, little else. They never find you or Hogwarts or anything else mentioned in Creevey's book.

They do wonder, sometimes, why a work of fiction was presented in such detail as if it were truly real. As if you were more than just a story to remind children about their old planet, where they had once belonged.

But eventually travel to the past is restricted by way of a government agency, as of course it would be. And nobody looks further than that.

:::

One day, humanity returns.

One day, Earth is terraformed again.

One day, they discover the vaults. They don't know what to make of it. They assume the objects and things they find to be highly advanced forms of technology, lost in the Exodus from Earth. They don't think of magic. It's not possible, not anymore.

They find your portrait, forever asleep, and place it in a newly formed ancient art gallery in New London. Few digital libraries bother to carry Creevey's book, and even fewer know your story, but just by chance the curator of the art museum is one of the last few loyal to your name. Harry Reynolds doesn't know that he's related to Harry Potter, ever so distantly, and never will. He contents himself with the fact that instead, he is named after you.

The last of so, so many.

:::

With Harry Reynolds' disbelieving grandson, the last teller of the Potter tale dies.

:::

The museum is closed from a lack of interest years later.

The portrait is sold to a rich young woman who finds it curious, and also finds your looks enchanting. She thinks you must have been a great man.

The spells on the portrait that keep it preserved finally wear off nine years later, and it crumbles to dust.

There is a lawsuit. It's not important.

:::

It has been hundreds and hundreds of years since Harry Potter lived, but it is not until then that finally he and his legend are able, in the hearts of mankind, to die.


End file.
